During the coming few months we will be covering a number of audio related topics to help the audio engineering student gain a practical insight into some of the many questions asked by those starting out into the field of audio engineering. An understanding by the student of the basics of AC theory is assumed, as we are not going to start from the very beginning, instead we will take a practical viewpoint rather than a theoretical one.

First, let's spend a little time looking at the different elements that go to make up the audio mixing console since this is the biggest and often the most expensive item in the room. The building block elements apply for most consoles in broadcast, music, post-production and front of house live sound applications. This also applies to whether it is for professional, semi-pro or for home use, digital or analogue. The same elements and signal path structures exist in various guises in one form or another. The audio mixing console is your instrument in which to create your art - a practical tool to accomplish a particular action. Therefore, consideration also needs to be given to surface layout, functionality, and the reliability of the device - not merely a collection of circuits and connections - often greater than the sum of its many parts.

1. The Basic Layout

As can be seen in Figure 1 above, the blocks are simply input and output sections, with mixing or summing amplifiers in between. The input channels can route either directly to the Mains/Masters, or via Group Summing Busses, which in turn can be routed to the Mains/Master Summing Busses and then onto the Mains/Master outputs.

The term Main or Master means the same, depending upon what school of thought you come from, and from what part of the world. Broadcasters in the UK often refer to Main rather than Master, no particular reason other than terminology and tradition. You will often find the term Masters in more music orientated or live sound applications. For the remainder of this tutorial we shall use the term Main(s) when referring to the mix path output.

The ancillary channels such as Auxiliaries (or Foldbacks) and Multitracks are fed from either channel send paths via a separate level control or from the output of the Group Summing Busses (or the Mains Summing Busses in some consoles), meaning any of the principal mix paths can be fed to any of the ancillary summing buss amplifiers and to their respective outputs - total flexibility for different applications. More about the Ancillary and Multitrack paths later.

Monitoring and Metering can be selected at different points in the mix paths or ancillary path outputs. We devote a separate section about Monitoring and Metering, so again, more about this later.

Topics covered
on this page:

1. Introduction.

2. Block schematic layout & drawing.

3. Mains/Masters terminology.